Coloured finals

Here's most of my final coloured pages. I went with the two shades of green idea which I think has worked quite well. I tried to place all the colours evenly across the page and where two areas of the same colour met I often added a line of light or shadow to break them up. I decided to use quite dramatic and obvious lighting in the panels to mimic a horror movie and create more faux-drama. Much like the colouring equivalent of when you put a torch under your face when telling a scary story. I think a few panels were saved by the colour as before they looked bare and dull, but I could add interest with the colour, using patterns and shadows. 

In the first scene I tried to use the colours to create a nighttime feel. I used a lamppost to make dramatic lighting fall in one direction and cast shadows along the plan scenery. I added parts in white, the text creeping up on him and exclamation lines. These stood out more in white than black on a busy background would. 

 On this full page I struggled to fill up the white space of the floor so I added a shaded area at the top which the main characters are receding into, leaving the focus on this dramatic snippet into someone else's plot-line. I also changed some heads in the crowd, moved them and extended the swarm of crocs.

I made the books all one colour to make then recede into the background while still being quite busy with lines. I'm not all that fond of the white spaces around the onomatopoeia bubbles, they look a little out of place and too stark

 I made the hats all different colours with patterns so they would both stand out from the plain backgrounds and not all the same so they wouldnt blur into obscurity, I wanted them to be the focus of their panels.

The top panel is one of my favourites, Im glad I chose to break the colour scheme with the red eyes as otherwise they wouldnt have stood out and I wanted it to be immediately communicated that they have eyes now, like hissing demons. I chose to have block colours behind the two people to save time on making backgrounds but I like how it turned out as it makes them look more dramatic.

I managed to sort this panel out, redrawing some elements. The third figure is still too stiff but Ive improved the cartoon run and the head in the second panel.

A very questionable arm in the penultimate panel. Glad I chose to make the books overlap the panel border

Much of this page was copied from other parts of the page and comic. It cut down my workload a lot, making my time much easier to manage.

I find the bottom two panels to be too heavy on the light green, this seemed the best possible distribution, but I should have made the floor white in the penultimate panel. 

 I tried to help the suggestion of movement by making the background black in the last panel and adding lighter motion lines. I think its an improvement on the floor but it still looks a bit awkward, the lines arent quite there. Also I drew the head in the second panel quite poorly. Next time I make a character I should allow time to practice drawing them from angles and in poses, rather than just going straight into it.

This page is also a little bit heavy on the light green because of how the placement of elements worked out and I couldnt just change the colour of things in this panel, that would be very inconsistent. 

The background in the penultimate panel was a bit of an experiment, but I think it worked. I tried to make it ridiculously comic style, like Scott Pilgrim, and I think it worked well for emphasising the force of that punch. And it helped to break up the heavy light green theme that was going on.

I chose to colour the doorway black to make one wait for the big reveal of the crowd later. Whether its dark outside I'm not sure, because later it worked best for the sky to be green, but either way filling the door with the crowd wouldve ruined the simplicity of the panel and taken away from the communication of her panicked realisation. I wanted to show the whole crowd were chanting 'ONE OF US' so I thought this would be the best way, better than having lots or several individual balloons.

I copied the people in the background from the previous panel, to both keep it consistent and to save time. I used the plain green background again to make it more dramatic and to block out the busy background and draw focus onto the struggle. I used the same green in the last panel to wash over all the crowd members and draw focus onto the two in the middle. I added shines to be in keeping with the dramatic lighting.

 The top of this page is a little heavy on dark green. The big panel is better as I tried to balance it out more, including using the green and red on the hat in the corner.

Overall I think the colouring went well, and definitely brought something to the pages, rather than ruin it like I initially thought it might. I'm glad I opted for colour over grayscale like I originally planned, its much more engaging, but if there's time I would still like to print out some small black and white versions to hand out. 

I think I've improved slightly at photoshop, I'm getting much faster and more efficient with the shortcuts and procedures and I can create a finished page much quicker now than I could when I began. It was a nice change to use both traditional and digital media to create one result.